Transforming Indian Agriculture Through Genome Editing Technologies: Challenges and Opportunities

Precision breeding through genome editing is gaining momentum worldwide as it has the potential of making desired and specific changes in crop genomes in the shortest possible time. The progress of technology toward enhancing its scope and specificity has been tremendous in the past few years as evidenced by emerging tools of base editing, prime editing, and more efficient nucleases. Genome editing can improve several traits of crop plants including yield and nutrition, tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, resource use efficiency, resilience to a rapidly changing climate, etc. The possibility of using genome editing for enhancing the oilseed and pulses production to reduce the import burden of India will be discussed. The challenges of nonavailability of genome sequences of millet and minor pulses and oilseed crops, lack of information of gene function and efficient tissue culture and transformation protocol of crops and genotypes will be elaborated. Comparison of GM technology with genome editing will be made from an Indian perspective to retrospect and learn from past mistakes. This chapter will provide a strategic framework for efficient utilization of genome editing technologies to transform Indian agriculture in alignment with government goals of doubling farmers income, producing more crop per drop, improving carbon credits, and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. Regulatory framework and issues of nontarget edits, IPR, infrastructure, and human resource will also be discussed.